SINGAPORE - Weeks before a series of bomb blasts in Bali on Oct 12, 2002, killed more than 200 people, mostly tourists, security expert Rohan Gunaratna wrote a note to Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, warning that terrorism was no longer a phenomenon unique to the Middle East, and raising the alarm on the threat posed by networks infiltrating South-east Asia.

Today, some two decades after the deadly attacks orchestrated by Jemaah Islamiah (JI) ushered in a wave of violent Islamist extremism in the region, the professor of security studies is experiencing some measure of deja vu.